I love books, love to read, love to read to my kids and love finding great children’s books. My husband will tell you I have too many books. I know it is all moving to electronic readers but I have not fully embraced that yet. One area I really feel the need for a real book is when I read to my kids. I mean it is so engrained in me from being read to as a child, to being read to in school. We had this great librarian in elementary school and she would always end our library day with reading us a book. She made a very big production and would light a candle and when she was finished the story, she had one of those brass candle snuffers to put it out. This was very cool for a 7 year old and I would recreate that scene many times as I played school as a child.
I have always loved reading to my kids and started when they were born. Actually I read a lot when they were in utero. I even had the Dr. Seuss book, “Oh Baby, The Places You’ll Go!” which was written to read to our children in utero. My older kids loved to go to book stores more than toy stores and we went often. We would come out with armfuls of books and everyone would be so happy. Unlike me, my older kids can read in the car without getting sick and you would never find my daughter without a book. Her love of books was so memorable that her brother who was a little more than 18 months younger wrote a story in 4th grade about how she had packed way too many books on a flight to our vacation and the plane crashed. When we crash landed, the bag of books fell on her 3-year-old brother’s leg and broke it. It was a funny story and since they had the same 4th grade teacher, she could not help but laugh because she knew how true the story could be.
Anyway, so now the two little ones are in that great stage of loving being read to. Last weekend I went to a favorite store of mine, that is a book goldmine. I was by myself and took a long time perusing over the many children’s titles. I got some books for their Easter baskets but I also got some nice story books. I have not gotten to read that many of the new books because my 3 year old is obsessed with one of the books. I knew when I saw it he would like it because it was about baseball, but I did not know how much he would love it. We read it a few times and then he pours over the pages himself. He knows the names of the kids on the team. In the stands we have to find Daddy, Mommy and all his brothers and sister. We talk about the various things the kids are doing and I cannot tell you how much he loves this book. Luke (2) likes it too but Ethan just loves it. The funniest thing was when my husband read it for the first time to the kids, he started tearing up at the end. I mean it is a feel good story about an underdog team of pretty bad players coming through in the end. If you have a little sports fan, you should check out this book. It is great for us because Ethan is about to start his first season of T-ball. I highly recommend this book. It is titled, “Mighty Casey” and it is by James Preller and illustrated by Matthew Cordell.
